Mick Beck

My aim is to enable people to have more fulfilling lives and relationships. I try to do this by helping them to explore life patterns, consider how to handle these, or look at particular problems my clients wish to examine.

I offer counselling to couples and individuals on relationship and personal development matters. I have been doing this work since 1999 and I am a Relate Licensed Counsellor. I work from home where I have a good counselling space. It is a large room where we can socially distance if appropriate, and has access independent of the rest of the house. It is wheelchair accessible if needed, and there is a toilet adjacent. It is a relaxing environment, very quiet, with views onto an interesting garden.

I prefer face to face sessions, but am also happy to work remotely using verbal or video media.

Since 2008 I have also been a therapist at Share Psychotherapy, a Sheffield based charity offering longer term regular sessions at subsidised rates to people with mental health issues. This entails weekly sessions at a fixed time and day, while with my personal work I can be flexible about scheduling of appointments. At Share we currently offer both remote and face to face in their building near Sheffield University Union.

My primary training was with Relate. The focus was mainly on the psychodynamic approach. Since then they and I have also incorporated more emphasis on looking at things systemically. I find that this combination along with some behavioural inputs on communications, self understanding and self nurturing all contribute to my work both with couples and individuals. I am also influenced by existential thinking and attended a gestalt therapy group for 2 years.

I work with a wide variety of issues affecting people’s enjoyment of life and their relationships, ranging from sex and intimacy, to handling histories of trauma and tragedy, working with mental and physical health difficulties, and living through relationship breakups.

I work daytimes or evenings, and can do weekends. I generally offer sessions of 50 minutes, for which the cost is £60; and I can run longer sessions at a proportionate cost.

On relationship work I find that people on average want about 4 sessions, but for some just one or two is enough, and others want more. I offer an initial session without commitment for more by either party. After the first session, the next few are more effective if spaced by a week or two as this helps to generate momentum. But for clients who want personal development and support over a number of years, more widely spaced appointments are often appropriate.

My clients come from many different ethnicities and sexual orientations. I have also worked with a number of clients who are neuro-diverse.

In the context of Share Psychotherapy which works on regular weekly appointments, clients are usually offered 2 years of therapy and review, which has led to some longstanding work. Traditionally this work has been face to face, but in covid times it has also incorporated remote sessions. Payments for this work are on a sliding scale according to income, and they are made to Share Psychotherapy, not to me.

After introducing myself, I aim to obtain some basic information about my client(s), like age, length and nature of primary relationship if appropriate, nature of employment if any, life style, and any health issues which might be relevant. Then my focus is on identifying the issues on which they feel they want help. With couples this can often mean split agendas.

By the end of the session, I can usually give people a clear steer about the areas I feel I could help with, and I may commence that work, for instance beginning to discuss communications between them and how these might be improved.

I finish by discussing whether they want to make any definite appointments to follow up. Alternatively, if they want time to reflect, how they should contact me. At that point if it is a couple, I may raise the possibility of offering them an individual session each with a view to then coming back together as a threesome. This approach is sometimes helpful for each individual to get things off their chest without raising the temperature of their partner.